On Friday, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) held a town hall-style event at a bowling alley in Petersborough, New Hampshire.
During the event, one woman asked Warren the following question about her ancestry: “What do I say to my native american relatives regarding the confusion around the native american ancestry issue?”
Warren replied:
<blockquote>I grew up in Oklahoma, and my three older brothers and I learned about our family [the] same way most people do – from our mom and from our dad. My family’s very important to me, and that’s why many years ago I sometimes identified as Native American.
Boston Globe did a big investigation about this, gosh, what about a year and a half ago, never had anything to do with any job I ever got or any benefit.
But even so, I shouldn’t have done it. I am not a person of color; I am not a citizen of a tribe; and I have apologized for confusion I’ve caused on tribal citizenship, tribal sovereignty, and for any harm that I’ve caused.</blockquote>
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Whoa&#8230;
This is quite the admission from Elizabeth Warren on previously identifying as Native American:
“I shouldn’t have done it. I am not a person of color, I am not a citizen of a tribe. And I have apologized for confusion I have caused”<a href="https://t.co/ErjPhVb62h">pic.twitter.com/ErjPhVb62h</a>
— Nathan Brand (@NathanBrandWA) <a href="https://twitter.com/NathanBrandWA/status/1203053849478602753?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 6, 2019</a></blockquote>
Sen. Warren has been dogged by the question regarding her ancestry for years. Even President Trump took to calling the senator “Pocahontas,” and dared her to take a DNA test.
In October 2018, Warren released a video in which she spoke with Stanford Professor Carlos D. Bustamante, who had conducted a DNA analysis on the senator in order to get to the bottom of the heritage question.
According to Bustamante, who “used samples from Mexico, Peru, and Colombia to stand in for Native American” due to a lack of available DNA from verified Native Americans, reports <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2018/10/15/warren-addresses-native-american-issue/YEUaGzsefB0gPBe2AbmSVO/story.html?et_rid=654126300&amp;s_campaign=todaysheadlines:newsletter">The Boston Globe</a>, Warren had a Native American ancestor “in the range of 6-10 generations ago.”
Warren’s DNA test stunt troubled some in the Native American community.
Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-warren-i-have-more-indian-blood-she-does-frank-camp">said</a> that the use of “a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong &#8230; dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is [proven].”
Warren allegedly reached out an apologized, after which Hoskins <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/02/01/690806434/warren-apologizes-to-cherokee-nation-for-dna-test">stated</a>: “We are encouraged by this dialogue and understanding that being a Cherokee Nation tribal citizen is rooted in centuries of culture and laws not through DNA tests. We are encouraged by her action and hope that the slurs and mockery of tribal citizens and Indian history and heritage will now come to an end.”
In February, Cherokee Nation citizen Rebecca Nagle dragged Warren, <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/am-joy/watch/trump-appears-to-joke-about-trail-of-tears-in-tweet-about-elizabeth-warren-1440281667740">stating</a> in part:
<blockquote>Warren has zero Cherokee ancestry. Genealogists in 2012 did her genealogy. That’s what Cherokee genealogists do when somebody claims to be Cherokee &#8230; [Warren] comes from a line of very well-documented white people, going back to before the Trail of Tears&#8230;
There are over forty-five rolls of Cherokee people between the 1810s and the 1910s, and Cherokee genealogists went [and] looked up Warren’s family tree and then crossed-referenced her relatives with those forty-five rolls and looked for them, and they’re not there. So there is no evidence that she has a single Cherokee ancestor. The only evidence she has is this race-based science of a DNA test which you cannot use to lay claim to any tribe or any relationship to any tribe, and people don’t know that.</blockquote>
Warren’s troubles have continued. In February, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-apologizes-for-calling-herself-native-american/2019/02/05/1627df76-2962-11e9-984d-9b8fba003e81_story.html?noredirect=on">The Washington Post</a> uncovered the senator’s 1986 “registration card for the State Bar of Texas.” On the card, Warren lists her race as “American Indian.”
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Here is the form Elizabeth Warren filled out for the State Bar of Texas claiming American Indian heritage. <a href="https://t.co/VwHifS7BCL">pic.twitter.com/VwHifS7BCL</a>
— Amy Gardner (@AmyEGardner) <a href="https://twitter.com/AmyEGardner/status/1092941590555971585?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2019</a></blockquote>
“The Texas bar registration card is significant, among other reasons, because it removes any doubt that Warren directly claimed the identity,” wrote Annie Linskey and Amy Gardner.
The Washington Post adds that “there’s no indication Warren had anything to gain by reporting herself as Native American on the Texas bar card.”
As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-warren-i-have-more-indian-blood-she-does-frank-camp">previously reported</a>, The Washington Post article notes that from 1986 to 1995, Warren listed herself as a “minority” in the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) directory. Additionally, from 1995 to 2004, Harvard Law School reportedly listed Warren as Native American on forms relating to affirmative action.
The Harvard Law School listing allegedly began well after Warren had been hired. Additionally, according to the outlet, Warren’s ethnicity listing at the University of Pennsylvania changed to “Native American” in December of 1989, two years after being hired.
Warren was even asked when she knew she wasn’t Native American during an appearance on “The Breakfast Club” in May, co-hosted by Charlamagne tha God.
“How long did you hold onto that?” he asked, noting the Texas Bar registration card. “Why’d you do that?”
Warren replied: “You know, so, it’s what I believed. Like I said, it’s what I learned from my family.”
Charlamagne tha God didn’t appear satisfied, asking: “When did you find out you weren’t?”
Warren stumbled. “Well, it’s, I&#8217;m not a person of color. I&#8217;m not a citizen of a tribe – and tribal citizenship is an important distinction.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none">
REMINDER: Elizabeth Warren has not addressed when she learned that she is not Native American.
Back in May, she refused to answer TWICE when asked at what point she learned that she wasn&#8217;t not Native American. <a href="https://t.co/xRnFBveqiT">pic.twitter.com/xRnFBveqiT</a>
— Nathan Brand (@NathanBrandWA) <a href="https://twitter.com/NathanBrandWA/status/1203065322120646656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 6, 2019</a></blockquote>
Despite all this mess, Warren is still seen by many progressives as a possible lock for the Democratic nomination. However, recent polling out of Iowa and New Hampshire (the first two primary/caucus states) show Warren falling, and rival Pete Buttigieg rising.
According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Warren currently sits in third place in Iowa with 17.7% of the vote. Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) rank first and second with 24% and 18.3%, respectively.
In New Hampshire, Warren faces almost identical problems, coming in third place with 14.3%, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. Once again, Buttigieg and Sanders have taken first and second place with 20% and 17%, respectively.
In Nevada, Warren is behind Former Vice President Joe Biden by nine points, and in South Carolina, the senator is a whopping 19% down on Biden. In North Carolina (though the polling there is not as fresh), Warren falls 17% below Biden.
Warren sits atop the polls in only two states for which RealClearPolitics is keeping tabs. In California, which will hold its primary on Super Tuesday (March 3, 2020), Warren currently captures 21.5% support to Biden’s 21.3% support. In Massachusetts, the state from which Warren hails as a senator, Warren has 28.5% to second place Biden’s 22%.
Warren has also taken a dive in national polling.
Following a brief rise in October and early-November during which time she threatened to take the top spot from Biden, Warren has tumbled back down to third place. As of publication, Warren sits at 14.2% support in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Behind Biden at 27.8% and Sanders at 15.6%.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Warren Faces Ancestry Question At Town Hall: ‘I Shouldn’t Have Done It. I Am Not A Person Of Color’

2020 Election

Democratic Party

Elizabeth Warren

Race

On Friday, iconic legacy news institution Newsweek <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/rising-death-rates-among-white-americans-caused-misperceived-threat-their-dominant-social-status-1474038">unintentionally encapsulated</a> leftist myopia and willful ignorance when it comes to one of the great social maladies of our time: Soaring death rates among white Americans. &#8220;Rising death rates among white Americans caused by misperceived treat [sic] to their dominant social status, study shows,&#8221; Newsweek <a href="https://twitter.com/Newsweek/status/1200210310747041794">tweeted</a>.
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Rising death rates among white Americans caused by misperceived treat to their dominant social status, study shows <a href="https://t.co/3zGDznL3cG">https://t.co/3zGDznL3cG</a>
&mdash; Newsweek (@Newsweek) <a href="https://twitter.com/Newsweek/status/1200210310747041794?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 29, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The Newsweek piece cited a new <a href="https://m.phys.org/news/2019-11-loss-social-status-linked-mortality.html">University of Toronto public health study</a> for the proposition that &#8220;rising mortality in white Americans is partly due to perceptions that they are losing social status.&#8221; Newsweek quoted Arjumand Siddiqi, lead author of the study and an associate professor of epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health: &#8220;The anxiety of whites is coming from a misperception that their dominant status in society is being threatened, which is manifesting in multiple forms of psychological and physiological stress. &#8230; Status is a major predictor of health so our team hypothesized that it was a perception among whites that Blacks are economically catching up to them, when, in fact, income inequality and other socioeconomic factors continue to affect Black Americans more unfavorably.&#8221; In other words, &#8220;white anxiety&#8221; is to blame for rising drug/alcohol-induced deaths suicides among white Americans.
Well. It couldn&#8217;t have anything to do with our unprecedented national pandemic of transnational <a href="https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah-drug-trafficking-investigation/">terrorist organization</a>-linked Mexican cartels syncing up with the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50327998">Chinese</a> to commit de facto <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/trump-right-drug-traffickers-heroin-fentanyl-killing-us/">chemical warfare</a> against vulnerable Americans, could it?
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It&#39;s actually the fentanyl. <a href="https://t.co/91AXUc9c5I">https://t.co/91AXUc9c5I</a>
&mdash; Charles Fain Lehman (@CharlesFLehman) <a href="https://twitter.com/CharlesFLehman/status/1200423168416059393?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 29, 2019</a></blockquote>
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It’s totally not due to our porous border and interior enforcement policies and the way the Mexican cartels, mid-level traffickers, and illegal alien foot soldiers all coordinate a national distribution ring of lethal narcotics like fentanyl, right? <a href="https://t.co/AvrqBwged6">https://t.co/AvrqBwged6</a>
&mdash; Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1200423907083390983?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 29, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The reality, as Daniel Horowitz <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/media-willfully-ignores-connection-killer-drugs-illegal-immigration/">wrote</a> back in February for Conservative Review, is that our purported mainstream media vanguards are willfully and deliberately ignorant about the lethal nexus of a weak border security policy, feckless <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-border-wall-nice-interior-enforcement-nicer-josh-hammer">interior enforcement</a>, criminal illegal alien networks operating with impunity throughout the nation&#8217;s interior, and our debilitating drug and overdose epidemics. &#8220;[C]artels not only have control of our border,&#8221; Horowitz observed, &#8220;but operate with latitude on our shores and have endless illegal alien and transnational criminal networks working for them in all our major cities and even mid-sized cities on the East Coast. This is the key to understanding how illegal immigration is driving the drug crisis.&#8221;
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics">statistics</a> lay bare the statistical reality that is our nation&#8217;s crippling narcotics crisis. According to CBP Office of Field Operations (OFO) nationwide drug seizure statistics, seizures of cocaine more than doubled over the course of fiscal year 2015 to fiscal year 2019: From 38,346 pounds to 89,207 pounds. Over the same time span, OFO seizures of methamphetamine increased from 25,495 pounds to 68,585 pound and OFO seizures of fentanyl increased from a negligible 70 pounds to an astounding 2,545 pounds.
There is a well-orchestrated, well-funded, systemic operation to commit chemical warfare upon this nation&#8217;s interior. Indeed, drug trafficking is likely the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-why-no-one-discussing-drug-trafficking-josh-hammer">single least discussed aspect</a> of the crisis afflicting our beleaguered southern border over the course of the past year. We have an unprecedented glut of deadly narcotics pouring into the nation. And recall that a sugar packet-sized dose of fentanyl can kill a whole room full of people.
To be sure, depressingly large swaths of this country&#8217;s citizenry also suffer from an existential crisis of meaning. Loneliness and despondency are on the rise. All varieties of the nation&#8217;s once-proud institutions seem to be <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-who-will-stand-for-the-forgotten-american">failing middle America</a>, en masse. The need for a politics centered around <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-on-chick-fil-a-political-tribalism-and-the-need-for-national-solidarity">national solidarity</a> has never been greater.
But for goodness&#8217; sake, Newsweek, have the human decency to look just  a little harder at what might be greatly exacerbating soaring rates of white depression and suicide in America. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-federal-government-has-no-more-important-josh-hammer">Securing our border</a> once and for all and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-the-u-s-is-morally-obligated-to-take-on-the-mexican-drug-cartels">cracking down on the cartels</a> is hardly anywhere near a panacea for all the ills afflicting our nation, but stanching the supply of lethal narcotics will surely help. A lot.

Newsweek magazine

HAMMER: Newsweek Highlights The Left’s Willful Ignorance About Our Border And Drug Crises

Drugs

Illegal Immigration

Leftism

Media

Media Bias

Mexico

Newsweek

Southern Border

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Billionaire founder of BET (Black Entertainment Television) and lifelong Democrat Robert Johnson had some unwelcome comments for his fellow Democrats in a recent interview with CNBC. The current group of Democratic presidential contenders, said Johnson, is incapable of taking down Donald Trump in 2020.
&#8220;If you take a snapshot today, I don&#8217;t think that group is capable of beating Donald Trump, despite what the polls say,&#8221; Johnson told CNBC this week, in comments reported by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/29/robert-johnson-trump/">The Washington Post</a> on Friday.
&#8220;I think the president has always been in a position where it&#8217;s his to lose,&#8221; said Johnson, who the Post notes is &#8220;America&#8217;s first black billionaire.&#8221;
Part of the problem, Johnson suggested, is that the current crop of candidates have gravitated too far left, particularly for most African Americans.
&#8220;I do not see anybody in the Democratic primary race today that is enough in the center where I believe most are the voters are, and particularly where most African Americans are,&#8221; he said.
Trump&#8217;s &#8220;incendiary&#8221; rhetoric, as the Post describes it, has a &#8220;double effect,&#8221; said Johnson: It revs up his base while also prompting Democrats to overreact, which further adds to the president&#8217;s support.
Another problem for Democrats is the historically high employment numbers among African Americans, particularly African American women, as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/06/economy/black-unemployment-rate/index.html">CNN Business</a> detailed in September (formatting adjusted):
<blockquote>Black unemployment fell to a record low in August, helped by a jump in the number of black women on the job. The unemployment rate for black workers fell to 5.5% from 6%, according to the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2019/09/06/economy/jobs-report-august/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Labor Department data</a>. The previous record low of 5.9% was set in May 2018. The unemployment rate for black women fell to a record 4.4% from 5.2% in July. The unemployment rate for black men crept up to 5.9% from 5.8%. But the previous month&#8217;s rate was a record, so the rate is still near its historic low.</blockquote>
And employment statistics aren&#8217;t just looking good for African Americans, Hispanics are also enjoying record numbers, as CNN explained: &#8220;Unemployment among workers who identify themselves as Hispanic or Latino also fell in August to 4.2%, which matched a record low set earlier this year.&#8221;
In its report Friday, the Post makes a point of attempting to undermine Johnson&#8217;s credibility as a voice for the black community due to his billionaire status.
Johnson&#8217;s &#8220;wealth has drawn criticism from activists who say Johnson is out of touch with many African Americans when it comes to their access to wealth and opportunity,&#8221; the Post underscores, before providing a couple of disparaging quotes about Johnson from leaders of African American organizations.
&#8220;Bob Johnson is not working class. He does not reflect the issue, nor does he even seem like he has the ability to speak to the issues of the working class,&#8221; Black Voters Matter Co-Founder Tosha Brown told the Post in July.
&#8220;[W]hile Mr. Johnson may share the interests of millionaires and billionaires, he&#8217;s out of step with black voters,&#8221; said Black Pac Executive Director Adrianne Shropshire back in July.
In the interview with CNBC, Johnson also addressed Trump indicating after the 2016 election that he might offer him a cabinet position, which Johnson said he made clear he had no interest in pursuing.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tucker-carlson-real-reason-media-hates-b-s-artist-trump-is-exact-opposite-of-what-they-claim">Tucker Carlson: Real Reason Media Hates ‘B.S. Artist’ Trump Is Exact Opposite Of What They Claim</a>

Robert Johnson

BET Founder: No Current Democratic Contender Can Beat Trump

Donald Trump

The Hallmark Channel has now been scrutinized for having a lack of religious and racial diversity during its &#8220;Countdown to Christmas&#8221; programming.
According to <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/hallmark-channel-struggles-give-diversity-a-home-holidays-1257946">The Hollywood Reporter </a>(THR), the Hallmark Channel featured just four movies this year with black leads and virtually no other religious representation outside of Judaism and Christianity.
&#8220;Of the network&#8217;s record 24 original holiday movies this season, four of them have black leads,&#8221; reported THR. &#8220;And that&#8217;s down from last year, when five of its 21 original holiday movies had black leads.&#8221;
&#8220;Missing from Hallmark&#8217;s festive roster? Any other religion in the title,&#8221; the report later noted. &#8220;That&#8217;s especially interesting given that Hallmark last year announced that it would be producing two Hanukkah movies in 2019 — &#8216;Holiday Date&#8217; (Dec. 14) and a &#8216;Double Holiday&#8217; (Dec. 22). &#8216;Double Holiday&#8216; is a romance between a woman who is Jewish, while &#8216;Holiday Date&#8217; features a Jewish guy pretending to be &#8216;Mr. Christmas.'&#8221;
Speaking on THR&#8217;s TV podcast, Bill Abbott, CEO of Crown Media Family Networks (Hallmark&#8217;s parent company), said that the allegation that Hallmark has no diversity is unfair.
&#8220;I think that generalization isn&#8217;t fair either, that we just have Christmas with white leads,&#8221; Abbott said. &#8220;In terms of broadening out the demographic, it’s something we’re always thinking about, always considering and we’ll continue to make the movies where the best scripts are delivered to us and what we think have the most potential.&#8221;
As to why the two movies featuring Jewish characters did not use the word &#8220;Hanukkah&#8221; in the title, Abbott said the programming has never been overtly religious, arguing that Christmas is more of a &#8220;seasonal celebration.&#8221;
&#8220;We are very proud of those movies and we think those movies really reflect an across-the-board approach to celebrating the holiday season,&#8221; Abbott said. &#8220;It’s hard if we start to slice up the pie, so to speak, and make movies based off of specific holidays. So, if we were to look at Kwanzaa, for example, or other religions and how they celebrate the holidays it’s a little bit more difficult because we don’t look at Christmas from a religious point of view, it’s more a seasonal celebration. [O]nce you start to slice it more finely within individual religions it’s a little bit tougher to necessarily tell that story in a way that doesn’t involve religion and we always want to stay clear of religion or controversy.&#8221;
&#8220;I think Christmas has become almost a secular type of holiday more than Hanukkah, which really does have more of a religious feel,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;I think Hanukkah, from a religious point of view, is not necessarily as commercial and not necessarily as much about gift-giving and it’s really about what those eight nights signify from the religious point of view. So I’m not ruling it out as something we would not do but this is kind of our first foray into this type of double holiday mix with a lot of Hanukkah in both movies [and] a lot of the celebration of how those nights are celebrated and experienced by those who practice the religion.&#8221;
Abbott did, however, say that the Hallmark Channel has an interest in featuring other diverse leads, including LGBT.

Hallmark Channel&#8217;s Countdown To Christmas Celebration And VIP Screening Of &#8220;Christmas At Holly Lodge&#8221;

Hallmark Channel Blasted For Lack Of Inclusion, Diversity

Diversity

LGBT

Religion

Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett reportedly alleged on Wednesday in an appeal to the NFL that Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph called him a racial slur in the moments leading up to a recent on-field fight between the two players.
&#8220;Garrett made the allegation as part of his initial comments during the appeal hearing in New York, sources said,&#8221; ESPN&#8217;s Adam Schefter <a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/28130757/during-appeal-myles-garrett-accused-mason-rudolph-using-racial-slur">reported</a>. &#8220;It created an argumentative exchange between both sides about whether the allegation was permissible to be used in the appeal at that time.&#8221;
&#8220;When the allegation was made, appeals officer James Thrash remained stoic and took copious notes, sources said,&#8221; ESPN added. &#8220;He did ask Garrett a question about how he might act differently in the future, and Garrett conveyed he would not let events escalate like that again in the future.&#8221;
The Steelers, Rudolph, and Rudolph&#8217;s lawyer all strongly denied the accusation from Garrett.
Steelers spokesman Burt Lauten said: &#8220;Mason vehemently denies the report of being accused of using a racial slur during the incident Thursday night in Cleveland. He will not discuss this accusation any further and his focus remains on preparation for Sunday&#8217;s game against the Cincinnati Bengals.&#8221;
Rudolph&#8217;s attorney, Timothy M. Younger, said: &#8220;According to ESPN, in his appeal, Myles Garrett falsely asserted that Mason Rudolph uttered a racial slur toward him, prior to swinging a helmet at Mason&#8217;s uncovered head, in a desperate attempt to mitigate his suspension. This is a lie. This false allegation was never asserted by Garrett in the aftermath of the game, never suggested prior to the hearing, and conspicuously absent in the apology published by the Browns and adopted by Garrett. The malicious use of this wild and unfounded allegation is an assault on Mason&#8217;s integrity which is far worse than the physical assault witnessed on Thursday. This is reckless and shameful. We will have no further comment.&#8221;
Garrett&#8217;s appeal to the NFL comes after he was suspended indefinitely for the November 15th incident in which Garrett ripped Rudolph&#8217;s helmet off his head and hit him in the head with it.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Not sure how they let Garrett play again this season after this. Yanking Rudolph by the face mask until his helmet came off, then hitting him with his helmet in the head? <a href="https://t.co/hfbqHt43uo">pic.twitter.com/hfbqHt43uo</a>
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) <a href="https://twitter.com/mattdizwhitlock/status/1195204456972988416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
The following day, Garrett <a href="http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000001076995/article/browns-de-myles-garrett-suspended-indefinitely">responded</a>, &#8220;Last night, I made a terrible mistake. I lost my cool and what I did was selfish and unacceptable. I know that we are all responsible for our actions and I can only prove my true character through my actions moving forward. I want to apologize to Mason Rudolph, my teammates, our entire organization, our fans and to the NFL. I know I have to be accountable for what happened, learn from my mistake and I fully intend to do so.&#8221;
Browns owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam responded to the incident the following day, saying, &#8220;We are extremely disappointed in what transpired last evening at the end of our game. There is no place for that in football and that is not reflective of the core values we strive for as an organization. We sincerely apologize to Mason Rudolph and the Pittsburgh Steelers. Myles Garrett has been a good teammate and member of our organization and community for the last three years but his actions last night were completely unacceptable. We understand the consequences from the league for his actions.&#8221;

Myles Garrett Mason Rudolph

Myles Garrett Makes New Allegation Against Mason Rudolph In Appeal To NFL

Racism

Colin Kaepernick — the former mediocre NFL quarterback who coincidentally discovered a passion for “social justice” once his star had faded after an abysmal 2015 campaign when he lost 6 of the 8 games he played and posted only 6 touchdowns against 5 interceptions — was scheduled to workout for 25 teams this past Saturday. The circumstances of this workout were unusual.
Kaepernick has been out of the league since 2016, the same year that he began his infamous Anthem protest. But perhaps more salient to his three years of unemployment is the fact that he went 1-10 that season, posting only 2,241 yards passing and 16 touchdowns after initially failing to beat out Blaine Gabbert, which is the NFL equivalent of not being able to outperform Sean Spicer in your dance troupe. Kaepernick has done well for himself during his period of joblessness, signing a multi-million dollar Nike deal and being hailed across the media as a civil rights martyr. But the point is that he’d fallen out of his short-lived prime well before his &#8220;Star-Spangled Banner&#8221; antics, and then he spent three years shooting Nike ads instead of playing football.
I am not aware of any other case of the NFL holding a private, midseason workout (on a Saturday, the day before a game day, no less), attended by 25 scouts, for a backup-level talent who’s been out of the league for 35 months. Yet that is what Kaepernick was given. There is no conceivable football reason for the NFL to go to these lengths for Kaepernick. He’s not a star player and never was a star player — and even if he was a star player, it still would be highly unusual and probably unprecedented for the league to stage an event of this sort just for him.
But it wasn’t good enough for Kaepernick. The Nike salesman pulled out at the last minute, apparently deciding sometime on Saturday morning that he needed the event to be open to the media. The NFL didn’t want media, never agreed to have media, and for perfectly understandable reasons. They weren’t looking to host a Kaepernickapalooza media spectacle in week 11 of the regular season. They weren’t going to play host to a televised PR stunt for an out-of-work, 32-year-old, former bench-rider. Why would they? How could any sane or reasonable person expect them to?
Alas, Kaepernick is plenty sane but not reasonable, or else his reasons are entirely separate from the reasons of a real athlete who really wants to make his way onto an NFL roster. So, the man who once wore pig socks mocking the police during a practice, canceled the league-hosted event and staged his own at the last minute, complete with news cameras and journalists who think a guy is a Hall of Famer if he can throw the ball 50 yards to an uncovered receiver.
Kaepernick made another conspicuous wardrobe decision, sporting a “Kunta Kinte” shirt, implicitly comparing himself with a slave. I admit that I am no history professor, but I’m not sure that the plight of a multi-millionaire who had to settle for hocking shoes because he couldn’t get a job as a professional football player really bears any resemblance to historical slavery.
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As if the “look at me” nature of the thing wasn’t clear enough, Kaepernick closed out the festivities by ranting to reporters about how the “the 32 teams” and “Roger Goodell” are “running from the truth” and “running from the people.” Now, I’ve been on my share of job interviews in my life but I never considered canceling on my prospective employer at the last minute, demanding that he come to me rather than me to him, and then accusing him of “running from the truth” when he fails to immediately hire me. That seems very much like the strategy of a man who doesn’t actually want the job he is pretending to seek.
Consider how the whole thing might have gone if Kaepernick sincerely wanted to play football. He would have attempted to schedule his workout during the off season, when a number of teams are still making basic roster decisions. Then he would have showed up to the venue in a spirit of gratitude and eagerness. He would not have worn a t-shirt advertising his martyr-complex. He would not have scolded the NFL in front of news cameras. He would not have insisted on news cameras in the first place, because he’s applying to be an NFL quarterback not a cable news talking head. His post-workout comments would have focused on — imagine this — football, and he would have expressed a deep desire to make a roster and help a team win games. Kaepernick said none of that, because he’s not interested in playing football. He is a self-promoting fraud and this is his (very profitable, I must admit) con.
On a pragmatic level, it’s hard to argue with Kaepernick’s logic. With his diminished skillset and advanced age (by football standards), he could at best hope to be a journeyman second-stringer, hopping from one roster to the other, waiting for a starter to go down so he can fill in for a few games. Robert Griffin III’s case is probably analogous. He’s three years younger than Kap, and was once more promising, but now he earns a couple million dollars a year as Lamar Jackson’s mentor and backup. It’s a nice way to make a living, to be sure, but not as rich or glamorous as the life of a Nike-sponsored professional martyr. Kaepernick has carved out the latter niche for himself, and a comparatively humble existence as a comparatively low-paid benchwarmer just does not have the same appeal. That’s why Kap and his team of PR reps have made sure to stay in the zone between trying for a job in the NFL and actually getting a job in the NFL. That zone, as they’ve discovered, is filled with money and clout.
With all of this in mind, it would be incredibly stupid and counterproductive for any team to offer Kaepernick a contract. Of course, you can’t put it past organizations like the Jets and the Bengals to do incredibly stupid and counterproductive things, so I’ll never say never. Nonetheless, he is a washed-up, second-string quarterback who, in the very best case scenario, if he is able to reach the same meager heights he fell from in 2016, might get you 2,000 yards and a dozen or so touchdowns. Most backups in the league can do that, or better, and none of them bring a media circus along with them, nor do they threaten to turn your fanbase against you, nor do they have the same potential to rip your locker room apart, nor are they likely to call you a racist when you cut them.
Kaepernick’s production, even in the best case, could not possibly come close to compensating for the massive downside. I’m not sure that Tom Brady in his prime could have compensated for a downside so steep. And Kap is no Tom Brady, to say the least.
Maybe, though, a contract offer from the Bengals would be the most poetic result of all this. After all of his maneuvering to avoid an offer, it would be quite delicious to see him backed into a corner where has to actually reject one, thereby revealing the whole charade for what it is and always was. Or else, he’ll have to admit defeat and accept a fate worse than death: becoming a Bengals quarterback. As far as I see it, either of those options would be a fitting and deserved end to the Colin Kaepernick saga.

Colin Kaepernick

WALSH: Colin Kaepernick Is A Conman, Not A Football Player

This week, The Atlantic released its newest issue, provocatively titled &#8220;How to Stop a Civil War.&#8221; Leading its collection of essays is a fascinating piece by Yoni Applebaum. In it, Applebaum posits that at the crux of America&#8217;s vitriolic politics lies demographic change: &#8220;The United States is undergoing a transition perhaps no rich and stable democracy has ever experienced: Its historically dominant group is on its way to becoming a political minority — and its minority groups are asserting their co-equal rights and interests.&#8221;
This, he suggests, has led to an impasse for the center-right, which refuses to adapt to changing demographics, instead doubling down on President Donald Trump&#8217;s white, working-class base. Applebaum explains, &#8220;When a group that has traditionally exercised power comes to believe that its eclipse is inevitable, and that the destruction of all it holds dear will follow, it will fight to preserve what it has — whatever the cost.&#8221;
But Applebaum&#8217;s thesis doesn&#8217;t explain why, in his view, conservatives have abandoned the attempt to persuade new populations. Applebaum himself acknowledges that a &#8220;conservatism defined by ideas can hold its own against progressivism, winning converts to its principles and evolving with each generation.&#8221; Why, then, have conservatives supposedly given up?
The answer lies in a simple truth: Conservatives haven&#8217;t despaired of winning over new converts.
While a slight majority of Republicans believe that immigration should be reduced, pluralities or majorities of Republicans in the majority of polls believe that immigration is good for the country; a heavy majority of Republicans favor a &#8220;merit-based&#8221; immigration approach.
Conservative opposition to increased immigration isn&#8217;t driven by fears of demographic change. It&#8217;s driven by fear of ideological change. And that fear of ideological change is actually driven by Democrats&#8217; radicalism — and their overt suggestion that demographic change will provide the fodder for that radicalism.
Applebaum rightly states, &#8220;The United States possesses a strong radical tradition, but its most successful social movements have generally adopted the language of conservatism, framing their calls for change as an expression of America&#8217;s founding ideals rather than as a rejection of them.&#8221;
But today&#8217;s successful social movements — the movements of the Democratic left — no longer bother with such niceties. Instead, they declare that America was, has been and always will be a racist place, riven by hierarchies of power, a corrupt structure to be overturned by that emerging demographic majority. These movements overtly call for curbing essential American freedoms — freedom of speech, freedom to bear arms, freedom of religion — in order to overthrow the corrupt power structure. The Democratic left then insists that immigration levels be increased both legally and illegally and suggests that its opponents are driven by unbridled racism.
In essence, the Democrats have decided that rather than expanding the application of American principles to new groups, they prefer to fundamentally change the definition of American principles and utilize immigration policy to facilitate that change. No wonder conservatives have responded by calling for immigration restrictions.
Conservatism must indeed root out and destroy any elements of race-driven policy from its midst. Conservatism speaks every language and can reside in any human heart. If the left wishes to avoid a civil war, it can start by doing the same: refraining from the argument that demographic change innately signals rewriting the definition of Americanism, and arguing in favor of that revision.

Migrant Caravan

SHAPIRO: Are Conservative Immigration Restrictionists Racist?

Conservatism

Immigration

Progressivism

Ben Shapiro

WATCH: Ben Shapiro Dismantles The Left&#8217;s Claim That America Was Built On Slavery

American History

Slavery

Boston University&#8217;s minority student group Black BU issued an open letter to the university community Tuesday expressing their feelings of being &#8220;abandoned, triggered, frustrated, disheartened, devalued, infuriated, overwhelmed, ignored,&#8221; and &#8220;embarrassed of the university&#8221; because it is allowing Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro to give a speech on Wednesday titled &#8220;America Was Not Built On Slavery; It Was Built On Freedom.&#8221;
The letter, which was obtained and published by <a href="https://www.yaf.org/news/embarrassed-of-bu-shapiros-boston-university-lecture-title-triggers-black-bu/">Young America&#8217;s Foundation</a>, the organization sponsoring the Shapiro event, begins by stressing what Shapiro&#8217;s famous tagline directly addresses: &#8220;feelings.&#8221;
&#8220;Abandoned, triggered, frustrated, disheartened, devalued, infuriated, overwhelmed, ignored, embarrassed of BU. This is how we feel. This is how BU has made us feel,&#8221; the student group writes (screenshot of letter below). &#8220;This is how our peers, the Young Americans for Freedom and those who condone their actions have made us feel. Facts don&#8217;t care about feelings, but we look beyond the facts to the faces and fake smiles that greet us day in and out on this campus. This reminds us that we are not one BU, that BU is not designed for us, and this BU does not belong to use just as our bodies and our minds do not and have not belonged to us since our rights as human beings were stripped away in the wake of slavery.&#8221;
The student org then specifies what has elicited such strong emotions among members: the title of Shapiro&#8217;s speech. &#8220;We do not speak for the 900 Black faces on this campus, but we do speak for the 133 students who mobilized on November 11, 2019 within 151 minutes to denounce this school&#8217;s support of Ben Shapiro&#8217;s actions, words, and most importantly, the name of this event: &#8216;American Was Not Built On Slavery; It Was Built On Freedom.'&#8221;
Though Shapiro has repeatedly and forcefully condemned the evils of slavery and addressed its economic and societal role in the U.S. until it was finally abolished through the Civil War, the student group accuses Shapiro of &#8220;denying slavery&#8221; and its economic role in the creation of the U.S.
&#8220;To deny slavery, and its economic role in the creation of the US as a nation is to deny the systematic degradation of Black bodies, the generational trauma, natal alienation, and social death that has marked and affected Black communities in the US since 1619, the birth of slavery on US soil as we know, and consequently, the birth of America.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html">The New York Times</a> has helped popularize the concept that the U.S. was not founded in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence, but in 1619 when the first African slaves arrived in the colonies. The alternative &#8220;founding&#8221; date allows the social justice left to describe the U.S. as indelibly defined by slavery and institutional racism despite the abolishment of the evil institution over a century and half ago and all the progress since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in eliminating institutional racism.
&#8220;It&#8217;s important to reject and refute language that emboldens the ideologies of white supremacy,&#8221; the letter continues. &#8220;Rejecting and dismissing the impact of slavery furthers the plight of Black people, and it is on us to combat this racist hegemony that exists.&#8221;
&#8220;This school constantly boasts about their most famous alumni, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but by endorsing a conversation titled, &#8216;America Was Not Built On Slavery; It Was Built On Freedom&#8217; this institution is ostracizing the very community that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for,&#8221; the group claims. &#8220;What about our ancestors who were exploited and forced to work for free. Are they forgotten? Will we continue to deny the magnitude of this country&#8217;s past? The foundation of this country is instutionalized racism that continues to affect our community today, and by allowing a conversation with this title, they are ignoring a past, present, and hope for the future that affects us every day. We cannot escape this reality. Our voices will be heard. We will not be silent because it is our duty to combat the negligence that this title creates.&#8221;
The student group then issues &#8220;not a plea or a protest&#8221; but a &#8220;demand&#8221;: &#8220;So, we come to you with this. It is not a plea or a protest, but rather a demand that for once, BU turns to the students who decry instances of passive and active, micro-aggressive actions and acknowledge our disdain and the sour taste on our lips leftover by the administration&#8217;s compliance with hateful speech. We demand to be heard, to be listened to, and to finally be acknowledged as our own advocates.&#8221;
They then rebuke those &#8220;allies&#8221; who assume they need their &#8220;megaphone&#8221; to speak out. &#8220;To the students who extend their allyship, thank you, but we speak for ourselves and do not need your megaphone to amplify our already vocal voices.&#8221; Next, they turn their focus on the administration, to whom they issue a warning: &#8220;To the administration, know that our eyes are wide open, we see you, and know that your actions do not go unwatched.&#8221;
Finally, the group addresses their &#8220;true allies,&#8221; including Palestinian students and members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and by which they expressly do not mean students with &#8220;privilege to protest,&#8221; as if some groups are not allowed this First Amendment right. &#8220;To our true allies, the Palestinian students, the LGBTQIA+ students, and any of the other students whose power does not lie in their privilege to protest, we stand in solidarity with you and among you,&#8221; the letter reads. &#8220;We keep our minds and hearts open and welcome you with love into our community.&#8221;
&#8220;But before we close, we remind you why we began,&#8221; Black BU concludes. &#8220;America was, in fact, built on slavery, on the backs of Black people, plagued with pain, sorrow, and disregard, so this brings us to ask those who condone this event and title: whose Freedom?&#8221;
In response, Shapiro told The Daily Wire, &#8220;It&#8217;s supremely typical of campus radicals to dismiss the content of a speech they haven&#8217;t heard, and to pre-emptively mischaracterize its content. But listening is more difficult than posturing.&#8221;
&#8220;Suffice it to say, I have never and will never downplay the horrors or legacy of slavery,&#8221; said Shapiro. &#8220;America is, however, the greatest force for freedom in world history; the darknesses of our past are an essential part of our story, but they are not what makes America unique and special.&#8221;
&#8220;As to the question — whose freedom does America stand for? — the answer is, all of ours. Which is why they have the right to protest, and I have the right to speak,&#8221; he added. &#8220;I look forward to all of us exercising our rights tomorrow.&#8221;
Though in their letter the Black BU accuses Shapiro of promoting &#8220;white supremacy,&#8221; Shapiro&#8217;s speech at Boston University comes less than a week after his <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-shapiro-dismantles-the-alt-right-and-radical-lefts-dangerous-game">speech at Stanford</a> in which he dedicated a majority of his speech to dismantling the racist, &#8220;white identity&#8221; ideology espoused by the Alt-Right.
Below is a screenshot of the Black BU open letter via <a href="https://www.yaf.org/news/embarrassed-of-bu-shapiros-boston-university-lecture-title-triggers-black-bu/">YAF</a>:
<img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-31580 lazyloaded" src="https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-1024x503.png" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" srcset="https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-1024x503.png 1024w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-300x147.png 300w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-768x377.png 768w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-67x33.png 67w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-480x236.png 480w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-600x295.png 600w" alt="" width="1024" height="503" data-lazy-srcset="https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-1024x503.png 1024w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-300x147.png 300w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-768x377.png 768w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-67x33.png 67w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-480x236.png 480w, https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-600x295.png 600w" data-lazy-sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" data-lazy-src="https://www.yaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-12-at-12.27.51-PM-1024x503.png" data-was-processed="true" />
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Boston University Student Group &#8216;Triggered&#8217; By Ben Shapiro Speech Title; Shapiro Responds

Boston University

Education

Kanye West continued to spread his message of independent thinking this week, when he advised black Americans that they do not always have to vote for Democrats.
During an interview at the Fast Company Innovation Festival, West said that the phrase &#8220;black power&#8221; does not mean voting for the Democratic Party forever.
&#8220;Own your power. Your power is not to just vote Democrat for the rest of our lives. That’s not the power,&#8221; West said, as reported by <a href="https://pagesix.com/2019/11/07/kanye-west-goes-on-whirlwind-nyc-trip-promoting-yeezy-presidential-run/">Page Six</a>. &#8220;The power is when I talk to my lawyer … I put on my trench coat and said, &#8216;We’re moving these factories to America, and that’s how it’s going to be&#8217; — and it’s lovely. We moved the headquarters to Cody, Wyoming … Our goal is to bring the manufacturing back to America — South America, North America — bring it back stateside and to present jobs for people back here.&#8221;
Kanye West has been on a bit of a MAGA roll with the release of his latest album &#8220;Jesus is King.&#8221; Speaking with radio personality Big Boy in a recent interview, West decried cancel culture as well as Democratic policies that have allegedly brainwashed black Americans into a cycle of self-destruction.
&#8220;I’ve been canceled before. That was canceled culture. Who told you that my career would be over? The same people that are telling you that you can’t have a right to say who you will vote for,&#8221; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-kanye-west-trashes-cancel-culture-racial-politics-abortion-in-lengthy-interview">West said</a>. &#8220;Those people will be soon to take Jesus out of school. Those people will be soon to remove Jesus, period, from America, which is the Bible Belt. Those people will be so mad. Come on, man.&#8221;
Kanye West went on to lament how Democrats have essentially brainwashed black Americans into voting for them with promises of food stamps and abortion.
&#8220;We’re brainwashed out here, bro. Come on, man. This is a free man talking,&#8221; said West. &#8220;Democrats had us voting for Democrats with food stamps for years. What are you talking about guns in the 80s, taking the fathers out the home, Plan B, lowering our votes, making us abort children.&#8221;
Following his attacks on abortion, Kanye West further extolled family values, when he said that families should have more children, referring to it as the &#8220;richest thing you can have.&#8221;
&#8220;[I want] seven kids. The richest thing that you can have is as many children as possible,&#8221; West said on &#8220;Carpool Karaoke.&#8221;
Prior to that, the 42-year-old rapper told Billboard in an interview that he told his staff working on the &#8220;Jesus is King&#8221; album to avoid premarital sex and to fast regularly.
&#8220;There were times where I was asking people not to have premarital sex while they were working on the album,&#8221; West said. &#8220;When people pray together and fast together, the power is increased.&#8221;
Kanye West also described himself as an instrument of God to help &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kanye-says-he-asked-jesus-is-king-employees-not-to-have-premarital-sex-hits-porn">spread the gospel</a>&#8221; of Jesus Christ.
&#8220;Now that I’m in service to Christ, my job is to spread the gospel, to let people know what Jesus has done for me,&#8221; said West. &#8220;I’ve spread a lot of things. There was a time I was letting you know what high fashion had done for me, I was letting you know what the Hennessey had done for me, but now I’m letting you know what Jesus has done for me, and in that I’m no longer a slave, I’m a son now, a son of God. I’m free.&#8221;

Kanye West

Kanye West: Blacks Don’t Have To Vote For Democrats

A black officer who fatally shot a white woman wielding scissors and using the N-word has been cleared of wrongdoing.
On October 25, Officer Patrick Edmonds, Jr., of the Bossier City Police Department in Louisiana, responded to a disturbance call from the LaQuinta Inn.
Shannon Rupert, a 45-year-old white woman, was wielding a pair a scissors and on the phone in the hotel&#8217;s lobby, where she was staying.
“The officer gave multiple verbal commands to Rupert to put down the weapon,&#8221; a statement from the Bossier City Police Department said, according to <a href="https://www.ksla.com/2019/10/25/large-police-presence-reported-bossier-city-hotel/">KSLA News 12</a>. &#8220;Rupert then aggressively approached the officer with scissors in hand. The officer fired two rounds from his department-issued handgun, striking Rupert in the upper torso.”
Rupert was pronounced dead from the gun shot wounds at a nearby hospital.
Graphic footage from Officer Edmonds&#8217; body camera, which can be viewed below, shows Rupert holding the scissors; she can also be heard calling the officer a &#8220;n*****&#8221; and daring him to shoot her.
&#8220;You&#8217;re going to have to shoot me, n*****,&#8221; the woman tells the officer before walking over to him. Officer Edmonds promptly fatally shoots Rupert, firing off two rounds.
&#8220;What I am disputing is why they could not have used a Taser instead or the dummy bullets because those dummy bullets will knock you down,&#8221; questioned Melinda Peterson, Rupert&#8217;s cousin.
As noted by KSLA, &#8220;It is not yet clear whether Bossier City police officers are issued Tasers.&#8221;
&#8220;I knew she had been into drugs really bad,&#8221; Peterson noted of Rupert. &#8220;I tried helping her. I tried talking to her to see if maybe we could get her some help, a recourse. Getting her into rehab or anything like that. She was just out of it.&#8221;
On Friday, a review of the incident determined that Edmonds&#8217; fatal shooing of Rupert was justified.
&#8220;Based on all evidence reviewed, it is my firm opinion that no crime was committed by the officer as his actions constituted justifiable homicide,&#8221; District Attorney Schuyler Marvin said in a letter to Police Chief Shane McWilliams, <a href="https://www.ksla.com/2019/11/01/da-clears-bossier-city-officer-fatal-shooting/">KSLA</a> reported.
&#8220;The circumstances confronting such officer were such that a reasonable belief existed that he was in imminent danger of losing his life or suffering great bodily harm, and the discharge of his firearm was necessary for the prevention of a possible lethal threat,&#8221; the letter continued, noting that Rupert &#8220;appeared highly animated and erratic in the time period preceding the officer&#8217;s arrival.&#8221;
&#8220;The officer conveyed a clear, concise warning of what would happen if the deceased continued to approach while armed. In immediate response to the officer&#8217;s warning, the deceased raised both arms while holding the scissors and moved towards the officer within a distance that appeared to be more than seven or possibly five feet when the officer fired two shots, in immediate succession,&#8221; the letter detailed. &#8220;The deceased&#8217;s intent of movement toward the officer is certain as her momentum continues to carry her forward even after she is shot. The events described herein happened much more quickly than described. Investigating officers interviewed witnesses who were on location before and during the events.&#8221;
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USA, New York State, New York City, Crime scene barrier tape

Video: Black Officer Fatally Shoots White Woman Wielding Scissors, Using N-Word

Law Enforcement

The warrant for the arrest of Fort Worth officer Aaron Dean for the killing of Atatiana Jefferson, 28, in her home provides details from the account of her 8-year-old nephew, who witnessed the fatal shooting. According to the boy, his aunt was holding a handgun and pointed it at the window after she heard noises outside from the officers inspecting her home in response to a call from a concerned neighbor early Saturday morning.
Police have underscored that it &#8220;makes sense&#8221; that Jefferson would use her gun if she felt she was being threatened by someone in her own home. The lawyer representing the Jefferson family has also noted that she legally owned the gun.
As reported by <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2019/10/15/atatiana-jefferson-pointed-gun-out-window-before-fort-worth-officer-killed-her-nephew-told-authorities/?fbclid=IwAR1Lx73SOk32HweII9ruwrS8na_hP0iohR7Ilh/">The Dallas Morning News</a>, the boy told authorities that he was in the room with Jefferson when she was shot and killed by Dean, one of the two officers who responded to a neighbor&#8217;s call expressing concern about Jefferson&#8217;s front door being left open and lights on so late at night.
The boy was playing video games with his aunt when she heard noises outside her home, he said. She took a handgun from her purse and pointed it &#8220;toward the window,&#8221; the boy told forensic investigators. That&#8217;s when Dean yelled, “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” then fired a single shot, killing Jefferson.
&#8220;Interim Police Chief Ed Kraus said at a news conference Tuesday that it &#8216;makes sense that she would have a gun if she felt that she was being threatened or there was someone in the backyard,'&#8221; Dallas Morning News reports.
“It’s only appropriate that Ms. Jefferson would have a gun,” said Lee Merritt, the lawyer representing Jefferson&#8217;s family, noting that she had a license to carry the legally owned firearm. &#8220;When you think there’s someone prowling around in the back at 2 in the morning, you may need to arm yourself. That person could have a gun.”
Merritt stressed that Jefferson legally owned the firearm and was licensed to carry it.
After turning in his badge earlier in the day, Dean was arrested on Monday on murder charges. Shortly afterward, the Fort Worth Police Department issued a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/update-fort-worth-officer-arrested-after-shooting-woman-in-her-house">press release</a> providing some details about the case.
“At approximately 6 p.m., Aaron Dean was arrested for the murder of Ms. Jefferson and he has since been booked in Tarrant County Jail,” the release reads. “Our department is working closely with the Tarrant County District Attorney’s office. Our Major Case and Internal Affairs Units are continuing to work around the clock to ensure that no stone is left unturned and justice for Ms. Jefferson’s family and community are served.”
The shooting has sparked outrage from the community, some of the leaders of which suggesting that it may have been racially motivated since the officer is white and Jefferson is black.
Amid the outcry over the shooting, the department released <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/body-cam-video-fort-worth-officer-shoots-woman-in-her-home-after-non-emergency-call">body cam footage</a> on Saturday showing the officers scanning the perimeter of her home using flashlights. After checking a door and some windows, Dean shouts, “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” He then fired through a bedroom window. The footage ends with two still shots of a handgun in the bedroom, presumably the one Jefferson was holding in self-defense when she was shot.
The video footage does not show the officer announcing that he is with law enforcement, and the neighbor who called the non-emergency police number says the officers parked around the block so their vehicle likely was not visible from inside the house.
Video below (warning: graphic content):
<iframe title="RAW: Fort Worth police release body cam after officers shoot woman in her home" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xpcV0ODTy0Y?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The badge of a Fort Worth Police officer

UPDATE: Woman Shot By Fort Worth Police Officer In Her Home Pointed Gun At Window

Guns

Second Amendment

Texas

After turning in his badge earlier in the day, the officer who shot and killed 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson in her home early Saturday morning after responding to a neighbor&#8217;s call to a non-emergency police number has been arrested. The shooting, which involved a white officer and a black victim, has sparked racially charged outrage in the community, and the department&#8217;s release of body cam footage has only inspired more criticism.
In an update to the case posted online Monday, the Fort Worth Police Department announced that officer Aaron Dean, 34, has been arrested and charged with murder. &#8220;Aaron Dean was arrested by Fort Worth Police on Oct. 14. Dean has been charged with murder of Atatiana Jefferson,&#8221; the department announced. &#8220;Dean is in the Tarrant County Jail.&#8221;
In a press release issued soon after the announcement, the department expressed its &#8220;deepest condolences to the family of Ms. Jefferson&#8221; and provided more details about Dean&#8217;s arrest.
&#8220;At approximately 6 p.m., Aaron Dean was arrested for the murder of Ms. Jefferson and he has since been booked in Tarrant County Jail,&#8221; the statement reads. &#8220;Our department is working closely with the Tarrant County District Attorney&#8217;s office. Our Major Case and Internal Affairs Units are continuing to work around the clock to ensure that no stone is left unturned and justice for Ms. Jefferson&#8217;s family and community are served.&#8221;
&#8220;To the citizens and residents of our city: We feel and understand your anger and disappointment and we stand by you as we work together to make Fort Worth a better place for all of us,&#8221; the release states.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/UPDATE?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#UPDATE</a> 
Aaron Dean was arrested by Fort Worth Police 
on Oct. 14. Dean has been charged with 
murder of Atatiana Jefferson. Dean is in 
the Tarrant County Jail.
Interim <a href="https://twitter.com/chiefkraus?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@chiefkraus</a> will schedule a News 
Conference for Oct. 15 at Bob Bolen. That time has not been determined yet. <a href="https://t.co/eRZfMWtgM4">pic.twitter.com/eRZfMWtgM4</a>
— Fort Worth Police (@fortworthpd) <a href="https://twitter.com/fortworthpd/status/1183899320711557120?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/UPDATE?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#UPDATE</a> on the arrest of Aaron Dean: <a href="https://t.co/owb3IiozOl">pic.twitter.com/owb3IiozOl</a>
— Fort Worth Police (@fortworthpd) <a href="https://twitter.com/fortworthpd/status/1183924831785553921?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
After being booked Monday evening, Dean was released on a $200,000 bond at 9:15 p.m., according to a Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman, <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2019/10/14/fort-worth-officer-who-fatally-shot-atatiana-jefferson-has-resigned-chief-says/">The Dallas Morning News</a> reports.
The department held a press conference Tuesday morning addressing the case:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
10/15/19 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NewsConference?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NewsConference</a> <a href="https://t.co/sJeTdn6HuB">https://t.co/sJeTdn6HuB</a>
— Fort Worth Police (@fortworthpd) <a href="https://twitter.com/fortworthpd/status/1184121791544995842?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
As reported by the <a href="https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/fort-worth/article236067328.html">Fort Worth Star-Telegram</a>, Fort Worth police responded Saturday to a 2:25 a.m. call on a non-emergency police number from concerned neighbor, James Smith, after he noticed that the front door of Jefferson’s home was left open and the lights were on — something he told the press he found &#8220;unusual.&#8221; Jefferson, said Smith, was home with her 8-year-old nephew, and he was worried about her wellbeing.
Police arrived, reportedly parking their vehicle around the corner so it was likely not visible to anyone in the house, according to Smith. Two officers, including Dean, began to check the perimeter of the home using flashlights. As body cam footage released by the department Saturday shows, while checking one side of the house, Dean yells, &#8220;Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” then fires a shot through a bedroom window (video below).
The footage also shows two still shots of a handgun police say was found in the bedroom, though it is unclear if Jefferson was holding it when she was shot.
“Perceiving a threat, the officer drew his duty weapon and fired one shot striking the person inside the residence,” Fort Worth police said in a statement reported by the Star-Telegram. “Officers entered the residence locating the individual and a firearm and began providing emergency medical care.”
But the lawyer representing Jefferson&#8217;s family says she was simply playing video games with her nephew and went to the window to see who was outside, suspecting &#8220;prowlers.&#8221; The video footage does not show the officer announcing that he is with law enforcement.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/update-woman-shot-by-fort-worth-police-officer-in-her-home-pointed-gun-at-window-warrant-says">UPDATE: Woman Shot By Fort Worth Police Officer In Her Home Pointed Gun At Window</a>
Video released by Fort Worth police below:
<iframe title="RAW: Fort Worth police release body cam after officers shoot woman in her home" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xpcV0ODTy0Y?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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Fort Worth Police

Fort Worth Officer Arrested For Shooting Woman In Her House

Amid mourning and outrage from community members, the Fort Worth Police Department released body camera footage on Sunday of a tragic officer-involved shooting in which a white officer shot and killed a black woman in her own home after a reported &#8220;non-emergency&#8221; call from a neighbor.
At 2:25 a.m. on Saturday, police responded to a call on a non-emergency police number from a concerned neighbor after he noticed that the front door of his neighbor Atatiana Jefferson&#8217;s (28) home was left open and the lights were on. The neighbor, James Smith, knew that Jefferson was home with her 8-year-old nephew and found it &#8220;unusual&#8221; that her front door would be left open and the lights on at such an hour, the <a href="https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/fort-worth/article236067328.html">Fort Worth Star-Telegram</a> reports.
The police-released video (below) shows two officers outside Jefferson&#8217;s home scanning the perimeter using flashlights, checking a door and windows of the home, when one officer shouts, “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” The officer then fires a single shot through a bedroom window.
The footage ends with two still shots of what the department says is a handgun found in the bedroom in which Jefferson was shot. Whether or not Jefferson was ever holding that gun is unclear.
The video also does not show the officer announcing that he is with the police department, and police have not specified whether he did so. According to Smith, the police parked around the corner; thus, Jefferson may not have been able to see their police vehicle.
Video below (warning: graphic content):
<iframe title="RAW: Fort Worth police release body cam after officers shoot woman in her home" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xpcV0ODTy0Y?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office said Jefferson died of the gunshot wound in her bedroom.
&#8220;Perceiving a threat, the officer drew his duty weapon and fired one shot striking the person inside the residence,” Fort Worth police said in a statement reported by the Star-Telegram. &#8220;Officers entered the residence locating the individual and a firearm and began providing emergency medical care.&#8221;
According to attorney S. Lee Merritt, who is representing Jefferson&#8217;s relatives, Jefferson was inside the home playing video games with her nephew.  Believing that the police were prowlers, she went to the window to try to see who was outside and was shot, Merritt said.
Though the released footage features images of a handgun found in the home, police have not said if she was holding the gun when the officer fired.
Asked by the Star-Telegram if Jefferson was holding the weapon and what exactly the officer perceived as a threat, the department declined to answer, a department spokesman telling the outlet in an email, &#8220;Being the preliminary stages of this critical investigation we have provided all the information we have available to release at this time.&#8221;
Smith, who stressed that he made the non-emergency call only out of concern for Jefferson&#8217;s well-being, expressed regret at his decision to involve authorities. &#8220;I&#8217;m shaken. I&#8217;m mad. I&#8217;m upset,&#8221; he told reporters. &#8220;And I feel it&#8217;s partly my fault. If I had never dialed the police department, she&#8217;d still be alive.&#8221;
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In a Facebook post Saturday, Merritt preemptively defended Jefferson against what he described as law enforcement&#8217;s &#8220;pattern of villainizing&#8221; suspects.  Jefferson, he noted, was a pre-med graduate of Xavier University who was &#8220;very close to her family&#8221; and was just trying to have fun playing video games with her nephew.
Several black community leaders and pastors held a meeting on Saturday in which they decried the tragic killing of Jefferson. One of the pastors who attended the event, Greater Saint Stephen&#8217;s Rev. Michael Bell, declared the shooting a &#8220;murder&#8221; and suggested it was racially motivated.
&#8220;The Fort Worth police murdered this woman,&#8221; Bell said in comments reported by the <a href="https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/fort-worth/article236078063.html#storylink=cpy">Star-Telegram</a>. &#8220;They murdered this woman in her own house. And now, African Americans, we have no recourse. If we call the police, they will come and kill us. And we know that.&#8221;
Police say the officer who fired on Jefferson is on administrative leave pending the investigation.
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H/T <a href="https://hotair.com/archives/taylormillard/2019/10/13/fort-worth-police-kill-woman-inside-home/">Taylor Millord</a>
</div>

Police Tape

BODY CAM VIDEO: Fort Worth Officer Shoots Woman In Her Home After &#8216;Non-Emergency&#8217; Call

During my student days at a UCLA economics department faculty/graduate student coffee hour in the 1960s, I was chatting with Professor Armen Alchian, probably the greatest microeconomic theory economist of the 20th century. I was trying to impress Alchian with my knowledge of statistical type I and type II errors. I explained that unlike my wife, who assumed that everyone was her friend until they prove differently, my assumption was everyone was an enemy until they proved otherwise. The result: My wife&#8217;s vision maximized the number of her friends but maximized her chances of betrayal. My vision minimized my chances of betrayal at a cost of minimizing the number of my friends.
Alchian, donning a mischievous smile asked, &#8220;Williams, have you considered a third alternative, namely, that people don&#8217;t give a damn about you one way or another?&#8221; Initially, I felt a bit insulted, and our conversation didn&#8217;t go much further, but that was typical of Alchian — saying something profound, perhaps controversial, without much comment and letting you think it out.
Years later, I gave Alchian&#8217;s third alternative considerable thought and concluded that he was right. The most reliable assumption, in terms of the conduct of one&#8217;s life, is to assume that people don&#8217;t care about you one way or another. It&#8217;s an error to generalize that people are friends or enemies, or that people are out to either help you or hurt you. To put it more crudely, as Alchian did, people don&#8217;t give a damn about you one way or another.
Let&#8217;s apply this argument to issues of race. Listening to some people, one might think that white people are engaged in an ongoing secret conspiracy to undermine the achievement and well-being of black people. Their evidence is low black academic achievement and high rates of black poverty, unemployment and incarceration. For some, racism is the root cause of most black problems including the unprecedentedly high black illegitimacy rate and family breakdown.
Are white people obsessed with and engaged in a conspiracy against black people? Here&#8217;s an experiment. Walk up to the average white person and ask, &#8220;How many minutes today have you been thinking about black people?&#8221; If the person isn&#8217;t a Klansman or a gushing do-gooder liberal, his answer would probably be zero minutes. If you asked him whether he&#8217;s a part of a conspiracy to undermine the achievement and well-being of black people, he&#8217;d probably look at you as if you were crazy. By the same token, if a person asked me: &#8220;Williams, how many minutes today have you been thinking about white people?&#8221; My answer would probably be, &#8220;Not even a nanosecond.&#8221; Because people don&#8217;t care about you one way or another doesn&#8217;t mean they wish you good will, ill will or no will. They just don&#8217;t give a damn.
What are the implications of the people-don&#8217;t-care vision of how the world works? A major implication is that one&#8217;s destiny, for the most part, is in one&#8217;s hands. How you make it in this world depends more on what you do as opposed to whether people like or dislike you. Black politicians, civil rights leaders and white liberals have peddled victimhood to black people, teaching them that racism is pervasive and no amount of individual effort can overcome racist barriers. Peddling victimhood is not new. Booker T. Washington said: &#8220;There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.&#8221; In an 1865 speech to the Anti-Slavery Society in Boston, abolitionist Frederick Douglass said that people ask: &#8220;&#8216;What shall we do with the Negro?&#8217; I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us!&#8221; Or as Patrick Moynihan urged a century later in a 1970 memo to President Richard Nixon, &#8220;The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of &#8216;benign neglect.'&#8221;
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com .

Question mark sculpture.

WILLIAMS: Who Cares About You?

A black elementary school teacher who fought against the St. Paul School District in Minnesota for their practice of letting minority students get away with bad behavior won $525,000 in a settlement Tuesday night.
Aaron Benner filed a federal lawsuit in 2015, claiming that the school district basically made him quit his job because they investigated him four times in the 2014-15 school year despite the fact he had never been disciplined before. Benner had already been teaching for 19 years by 2014, when he and four other teachers told a board meeting that the district was not reprimanding students for their bad behavior. The <a href="http://www.startribune.com/former-st-paul-teacher-settles-retaliation-suit-against-district-for-525-000/560627812/?refresh=true">Minneapolis Star-Tribune</a> reported, “Benner, who is black, accused the district of failing black students by not holding them accountable for disruptive behavior. The district was being led then by Valeria Silva, who sought to reduce racial disparities in student discipline.”
After the settlement, Benner stated, “I thank God for all the blessings in my life. I turned 50 this year, got married in July and now (there is) this settlement.” The district did not admit they had done anything wrong, but wanted to avoid the costs of a lawsuit, asserting, “This agreement enables the district to avoid the time, expense and uncertainty of protracted legal proceedings regarding its previous policies, practices and expectations.”
Benner won a recent court ruling allowing him to seek punitive damages when the case went to trial.
In 2015, Benner <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoooQRdHEYI">appeared on Fox News’ “The O-Reilly Factor</a>,” where host Bill O’Reilly stated:
<blockquote>For the past five years the St. Paul, Minnesota school district has spent nearly $3 million on “white privilege” training done by a far-left outfit called the Pacific Educational Group. That training tells teachers to overlook transgressions by minority students; to treat them differently than white students.</blockquote>
O’Reilly turned to Benner, saying, “You’re teaching at an elementary school and you’re seeing behavior, not in your class, but in the cafeteria, in the school grounds, that’s getting worse, correct?”
Benner: “That is correct.”
Benner continued:
<blockquote>You would see that same student who came in your class and disrupted you still in the school. And that’s mind-boggling. You’re like, “Where are the consequences? What’s going on around here?” That was my concern … In December of 2011, when I was working at another school, the behaviors were so out of control that I addressed the St. Paul school board by myself and I told them, “It breaks my heart to see children who look like me behave so poorly in our schools and nothing’s being done … I had an altercation with a student where the student actually punched me; I restrained the student, brought the student into the principal; I didn’t want the student to be incarcerated; however, I wanted some consequences. That student was returned back to my class, Mr. O’Reilly, within ten minutes. That’s when I knew there was a problem in St. Paul public schools. I knew that there must have been some sort of directive to keep these kids in school, in the classroom, no matter what.</blockquote>

I wil not talk in class

Black Teacher Who Opposed Minority Students Getting Away With Bad Behavior Wins Huge Settlement From School District

Minnesota

The U.S. Department of Justice has recently sued the Baltimore County government alleging that its written test for police officer recruits was unfairly biased against black applicants. It turns out that black applicants failed the written test at a rate much greater than white applicants. That results in fewer blacks being trained and hired as police officers. John A. Olszewski Jr., Baltimore County Executive said: &#8220;A law enforcement agency should look like the community it serves. As I have said repeatedly since taking office, I am committed to increasing diversity in the county&#8217;s Police Department.&#8221;
Baltimore City uses Municipal Police Selection Test. You can examine some sample questions at its website. I&#8217;d like to know which of the questions are either unrelated to police work or racist. Many jurisdictions use The National Police Officer Selection Test. You can examine some of the sample questions at its website. Again, I&#8217;d like to know which of the questions are unrelated to police work or are racially biased questions. In addition, it has been found that MPST and POST are successful predictors of law enforcement training success and job performance.
Black performance on police exams is simply the tip of the iceberg of a truly tragic cruelty. That cruelty stands front and center when one examines the education that most blacks in Baltimore receive. Several years ago, Project Baltimore began an investigation of Baltimore&#8217;s school system. What they found was an utter disgrace. In 19 of Baltimore&#8217;s high schools, out of 3,804 students, only 14 of them, or less than 1%, were proficient in math. In 13 of Baltimore&#8217;s 39 high schools, not a single student scored proficient in math. In five Baltimore City high schools, not a single student scored proficient in math or reading. Despite these academic deficiencies, about 70% of the students graduate and are conferred a high school diploma. A high school diploma attests that the holder can read, write and compute at a 12th-grade level. Obviously, the diplomas conferred on students who have not mastered reading, writing and computing are fraudulent.
When a person who cannot read, write and compute very well takes a written employment exam, including that to become a police officer, he is going to encounter difficulties. His difficulties are not caused by any racially discriminatory aspect of the test. His difficulties are a result of not having acquired what he should have acquired by the time he finished high school. But that is not how such a person sees it. He sees that he has a high school diploma just as a white applicant has a high school diploma. To him, any difference in treatment and outcomes must be the result of racial discrimination. Thus, the U.S. Department of Justice sued, claiming that the written test for police officer recruits was unfairly biased against black applicants.
The conclusion that Baltimore County&#8217;s written test for police officer recruits was unfairly biased against black applicants is tragic. It allows Baltimore public schools to continue to produce fraudulent education. You say: &#8220;Hold it, Williams! You can&#8217;t blame everything on schools.&#8221; You&#8217;re right. One cannot blame schools and teachers for students who are hostile to the education process. One cannot blame schools and teachers for a rotten home environment or derelict parents. But there is one thing entirely within the control of educators. That&#8217;s their power to issue diplomas. When they confer high school diplomas on youngsters who cannot read, write and compute at or near a 12th-grade level, they are engaging in fraudulent conduct.
Dr. Thomas Sowell&#8217;s research in &#8220;Education: Assumptions Versus History&#8221; documents academic excellence at Baltimore&#8217;s Frederick Douglass High School and others. This academic excellence occurred during an era when blacks were much poorer and faced gross racial discrimination. It&#8217;s worthwhile reading for black people to learn the capabilities of other blacks facing so many challenging circumstances. I&#8217;m wondering when the black community will demand an end to an educational environment that condemns so many youngsters to mediocrity.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

WILLIAMS: Racist Exam Questions?

Baltimore

Department of Justice

Police

I am told that the revealed blackface photos of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are “<a href="https://www.citynews1130.com/2019/09/18/insulting-shocking-troubling-party-leaders-react-to-photo-of-trudeau-in-brownface/">shocking</a>.” I can think of several different words to describe them — “hilarious” certainly being one — but I would not personally call them shocking. Anyone who has been paying attention cannot be shocked that the wokest white boy this side of the Atlantic has this sort of thing in his past. And when you consider his widely recognized penchant for dressing in <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4037948/trudeau-family-criticized-for-indian-outfits/">ethnic attire</a> — as Trudeau himself said last night, he has “more enthusiasm for costumes than is sometimes appropriate” — it would, if anything, be shocking if the man had never once donned blackface.
But is it racist? So far, we know that Trudeau adjusted his complexion for an Aladdin costume (in a remake that was at least better than Will Smith’s, we have to admit), and to perform a Jamaican song at a talent show, and in at least one other as-yet-unclear context. Objectively, none of this is necessarily racist. Stupid? Yes. Insensitive? Perhaps. But it doesn’t compare to the explicitly dehumanizing blackface worn by minstrel show performers in the early 20th century. This kind of blackface is a joke. Maybe even a tribute. It is not automatically racist, and, all things being equal, it doesn’t matter what dumb costume a dumb guy wore 20 years ago.
And yet, all things are not equal. This blackface stuff is irrelevant and un-racist only by the objective standard of reasonable, sincere people. That is to say, it is relevant and certainly racist by the absurd standard of unreasonable and insincere people like Justin Trudeau. Leftists deserve to be held to their own standards for a change. What makes Trudeau’s blackface scandalous is not that it is bigoted, but that it directly contradicts his carefully curated brand as a racially enlightened progressive. This is a hypocrisy scandal, not a racism scandal. And on that level, he ought to be raked over the coals.
Consider the leftist argument against men like Mark Sanford and Larry Craig. They say that they — the leftists — don’t much care if a man has an affair in his personal life, or solicits gay sex in a restroom, but it’s an outrage in the case of conservative Republicans because of their “family values” brand. These Republicans are the very people — so the argument goes — who trumpet their Christian virtue and attack others for falling short in that regard. It is the height of hypocrisy for them, of all people, to be doing the toe-tap in a bathroom stall. I don’t necessarily disagree with this logic. And it’s this exact logic that should be applied to leftist public figures who have racially insensitive skeletons in their closets. In the name of consistency, and for the sake of punishing hypocrisy, they ought to be treated exactly as they would treat anyone else who has done the same thing.
And how, precisely, does the Left treat such people? Well, consider what happened to Megyn Kelly when she merely talked about blackface on her NBC show. All she did was argue that sometimes blackface isn’t racist — sometimes it’s meant as a tribute, not an insult — and for that, she was pilloried, attacked, and eventually fired. The Left demanded Kelly’s head on a platter for defending exactly the thing that Trudeau actually did. So how should it treat Trudeau? Should we not insist on consistency? If the Left wants to give Trudeau a pass, like they gave Virginia Governor Ralph Northam a pass, then they must be similarly generous with anyone and everyone who has done or said racially inappropriate things in the past. This seems like a perfectly fair demand. One standard — not two.

Justin Trudeau

WALSH: The Left Tore Megyn Kelly Apart Just For Talking About Blackface. Justin Trudeau Deserves The Same Treatment.

Megan Crowley

Political Correctness

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau&#8217;s blackface scandal went from bad to worse Thursday morning when what appears to be a third instance of him wearing dark make-up to look like a person of color emerged — after the liberal leader suggested he had worn blackface only twice.
&#8220;Global News has obtained video showing Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau in blackface, the third instance of racist dress to come to light in 12 hours,&#8221; the outlet reported early Thursday morning.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BREAKING?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BREAKING</a>: A video — obtained exclusively by Global News — shows a third instance of Justin Trudeau in what appears to be racist makeup.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/cdnpoli?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#cdnpoli</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/elxn43?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#elxn43</a> <a href="https://t.co/1WNWm9QPat">https://t.co/1WNWm9QPat</a>
— Globalnews.ca (@globalnews) <a href="https://twitter.com/globalnews/status/1174656001582206976?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 19, 2019</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;The video was shot in the early 1990s, however, it’s not clear where it takes place,&#8221; Global News reports. &#8220;The video, obtained exclusively by Global News, shows Trudeau covered in what appears to be dark makeup and raising his hands in the air while laughing, sticking his tongue out and making faces. He’s wearing a white T-shirt, and his jeans are ripped at the knees. It appears as though his arms and legs are covered in makeup as well. It does not appear the video was shot at the same time and place of the other photos of Trudeau in racist make-up that have emerged in the past 24 hours.&#8221;
Global News notes that it had actually obtained the video earlier this week, &#8220;but had been attempting to verify it before publishing.&#8221; Early Thursday, a member of the Liberal campaign confirmed that it was indeed Trudeau.
&#8220;The source did not shoot the video but Global News subsequently reached the person believed to have shot the video,&#8221; the outlet notes. &#8220;That person would not confirm or deny that it was Trudeau in the video or the time and place of the video.&#8221;
The first image showing Trudeau in blackface was first reported by Time magazine. Trudeau donned dark makeup for a 2001 &#8220;Arabian Nights&#8221;-themed gala held at West Point Grey Academy, a private school where he taught.
A second blackface instance took place during a high school talent show, where Trudeau dressed up to perform the song &#8220;Day-O.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">NEW: Justin Trudeau Wore Brownface at 2001 ‘Arabian Nights’ Party While He Taught at a Private School<a href="https://twitter.com/melissalchan?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@melissalchan</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/anna_P_k?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@anna_P_k</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/maddiecarlisle2?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@maddiecarlisle2</a> report
Full Story: <a href="https://t.co/MmUGh8QKdL">https://t.co/MmUGh8QKdL</a> <a href="https://t.co/FlWwwD9uk5">pic.twitter.com/FlWwwD9uk5</a>
— Yashar Ali (@yashar) <a href="https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1174455955737776129?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 18, 2019</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">Justin Trudeau in blackface. <a href="https://t.co/5WigbaF49U">pic.twitter.com/5WigbaF49U</a>
— Stephen Taylor (@stephen_taylor) <a href="https://twitter.com/stephen_taylor/status/1174513512653164546?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 19, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The emergence of what appears to be a third instance of Trudeau in &#8220;brownface&#8221; followed him admitting to doing so on two occasions, as noted by <a href="https://twitter.com/ezralevant/status/1174655210570096640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1174655210570096640&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fgregp-3534%2F2019%2F09%2F19%2Fhes-still-lying-3rd-instance-of-justin-trudeau-in-blackface-surfaces-a%2F">Rebel News</a> and <a href="https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2019/09/19/hes-still-lying-3rd-instance-of-justin-trudeau-in-blackface-surfaces-a/">Twitchy</a>.
Trudeau addressed the growing controversy at a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51959/blackface-photo-justin-trudeau-surfaces-trudeau-ryan-saavedra">press conference</a> on Wednesday. &#8220;I stand here before Canadians as I will throughout this campaign and talk about the work we have to do to make a better country together,&#8221; said the embattled prime minister. &#8220;And I am going to continue to stay focused on that and continue to work to fight intolerance and discrimination, even though obviously I made a mistake in the past.&#8221;
&#8220;I shouldn&#8217;t have done it. I should have known better, but I didn&#8217;t,&#8221; Trudeau added. &#8220;And I&#8217;m really sorry.&#8221;
But Trudeau also admitted during the press conference that he darkened his skin on another occasion. &#8220;When I was in high school I dressed up at a talent show and sang &#8216;Day-O&#8217; with makeup on,&#8221; he said.
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/51959/blackface-photo-justin-trudeau-surfaces-trudeau-ryan-saavedra">The Daily Wire</a> highlighted, Green Party leader Elizabeth May unloaded on Trudeau over the issue. &#8220;I am deeply shocked by the racism shown in the photograph of Justin Trudeau,&#8221; she tweeted Wednesday. &#8220;He must apologize for the harm done and commit to learning and appreciating the requirement to model social justice leadership at all levels of government. In this matter he has failed.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49559/democrats-who-called-northam-resign-now-accepting-ryan-saavedra">Democrats Who Called On Northam To Resign Now Accepting Donations From Him</a>

THIRD Instance Of Justin Trudeau In Blackface Emerges After He Said He Did It Twice

Canada

Ralph Northam

For both the &#8220;Woke&#8221; and sleeping viewers out there, comedian-turned-full-time political activist Chelsea Handler hits all the wrong notes in her Netflix documentary exploring her so-called &#8220;white privilege.&#8221;
The newly-released documentary, wherein Handler explores how her white privilege has helped her career and its effects on American culture, has racked up some viewer feedback on review site <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hello_privilege_its_me_chelsea/reviews?type=user">Rotten Tomatoes</a>, and let&#8217;s just say Handler&#8217;s supposed white privilege provided little help in landing her high praise.
As of Wednesday evening, &#8220;Hello Privilege. It&#8217;s Me, Chelsea,&#8221; has a stunning 16% audience approval rating.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Ouch. <a href="https://t.co/ke8kSlqGx1">pic.twitter.com/ke8kSlqGx1</a>
— Amanda Prestigiacomo (@AmandaPresto) <a href="https://twitter.com/AmandaPresto/status/1174433128208830469?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 18, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The reviewers were wildly unsatisfied; either Handler was not sensitive enough to the intersectional Woke experience, or her desperate apologetics were too much to bear.
One seemingly left-leaning reviewer, for example, blasted the documentary as &#8220;full of fake outreach and perpetuation of black stereotypes with no real insight from the main character.&#8221;
&#8220;The most enlightening parts of this documentary are the conversations held with actual activist,&#8221; the female reviewer <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hello_privilege_its_me_chelsea/reviews?type=user">posted</a>. &#8220;There is no nuance or heart in this documentary.&#8221;
&#8220;[Handler] even had the nerve to make a sexual joke about (comedian and actress) Tiffany Hadish when Tiffany was being DEAD serious in her example of white privilege,&#8221; she continued. &#8220;Even when Tiffany was nearly brought to tears with a fact that had personally brought ME to tears, Handler reacted in the most unattached way ever.&#8221;
The reviewer noted that Handler &#8220;completely tried the &#8216;we didn&#8217;t have a lot of money&#8217; bit which she later contradicts by talking about going back to her nice neighborhood.&#8221;
&#8220;This &#8216;documentary&#8217; is full of fake outreach and perpetuation of black stereotypes with no real insight from the main character. I. Can. Not,&#8221; she closed.
Another audience review complained that Handler interviewed the wrong people.
&#8220;Chelsea was good and put effort into trying to understand what is going on, but I don&#8217;t think she interviewed the best people to talk about this subject because I ended up taking nothing away from this documentary,&#8221; the person said.
A female viewer who seemingly wanted to like the doc gave Handler two out of five stars and ironically criticized the work for exposing the comedian&#8217;s white privilege.
&#8220;[I don&#8217;t know]. I think creating a documentary and traveling the world seeking answers about white privilege is the epitome of white privelege [sic],&#8221; she posted. &#8220;I&#8217;m a fan of Handler and especially her last book, but this wasn&#8217;t her best use of time in my opinion. Was just a little cringey to watch to be honest.&#8221;
&#8220;Seriously cringy and racist all along,&#8221; a male reviewer bluntly wrote.
Another said, &#8220;So boring I cried.&#8221;
&#8220;Only giving it a half star because she made me chuckle once or twice,&#8221; a male reviewer posted. &#8220;Otherwise [it&#8217;s] a cringe fest of self deprecation/loathing.&#8221;
&#8220;A long, boring, scolding given by an unfunny white comedian pretending to depth. If you are a masochist, or a difficult person to be around, you will probably really enjoy it,&#8221; a post blasted. &#8220;Anyone with the bodily resources to create a measurable EEG readout should give it a pass.&#8221;

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